A review of the book, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient by Sander Gilman is presented. In this book, Gilman seeks to place Franz Kafka's life and work in the context of prevailing notions about Jews ...
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A review of the book, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient by Sander Gilman is presented. In this book, Gilman seeks to place Franz Kafka's life and work in the context of prevailing notions about Jews and Jewishness in turn-of-the-century Europe. The book is not a reading of Kafka's oeuvre as such but rather “a small attempt to see what is unobscured or only partially masked” in Kafka's fictions as they engage and reflect three overlapping and influential contemporary discourses that defined Jewishness: race, gender and disease.Less

W. J. Dodd

Published in print: 2000-02-03

A review of the book, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient by Sander Gilman is presented. In this book, Gilman seeks to place Franz Kafka's life and work in the context of prevailing notions about Jews and Jewishness in turn-of-the-century Europe. The book is not a reading of Kafka's oeuvre as such but rather “a small attempt to see what is unobscured or only partially masked” in Kafka's fictions as they engage and reflect three overlapping and influential contemporary discourses that defined Jewishness: race, gender and disease.

Malcolm Pasley achieved a unique authority as a British scholar in a major area of German literary scholarship, the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Good scholars are often blessed with serendipity, ...
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Malcolm Pasley achieved a unique authority as a British scholar in a major area of German literary scholarship, the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Good scholars are often blessed with serendipity, the tendency to chance upon what they need without actually looking for it or even knowing it was there. As with candidates for promotion to General, there is sense in Napoleon's question ‘Is he lucky?’. A chance encounter gave Pasley's work a new and unexpected direction; indeed, it turned what would always have been intellectually distinguished into something unquestionably central, and directed his meticulous mind to the most basic literary issues.Less

John Malcolm Sabine Pasley 1926–2004

T. J. Reed

Published in print: 2008-03-06

Malcolm Pasley achieved a unique authority as a British scholar in a major area of German literary scholarship, the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Good scholars are often blessed with serendipity, the tendency to chance upon what they need without actually looking for it or even knowing it was there. As with candidates for promotion to General, there is sense in Napoleon's question ‘Is he lucky?’. A chance encounter gave Pasley's work a new and unexpected direction; indeed, it turned what would always have been intellectually distinguished into something unquestionably central, and directed his meticulous mind to the most basic literary issues.

This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no ...
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This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no correspondence, in the sense of perfect resonance or unison, among the varied encounters with the question of translation of Prague Jewish authors in the early twentieth century. It does not even seem as though Otto Pick, Rudolf Fuchs, Max Brod, and Franz Kafka set out anything like a common goal or interest as they engaged with the figure of translation, and yet, in striking contrast to the Czechs and the Bohemian Germans, they were irresistibly drawn to such an engagement. The translation project was certainly significant in European cultural history for its effects, but its impetus was never an ideology of “pluralism.” Pluralism, it has been noted, has a liberal face but remains a hegemonic device to absorb and control difference.Less

Middle Ground : Translation, Mediation, Correspondence

Scott Spector

Published in print: 2000-01-03

This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no correspondence, in the sense of perfect resonance or unison, among the varied encounters with the question of translation of Prague Jewish authors in the early twentieth century. It does not even seem as though Otto Pick, Rudolf Fuchs, Max Brod, and Franz Kafka set out anything like a common goal or interest as they engaged with the figure of translation, and yet, in striking contrast to the Czechs and the Bohemian Germans, they were irresistibly drawn to such an engagement. The translation project was certainly significant in European cultural history for its effects, but its impetus was never an ideology of “pluralism.” Pluralism, it has been noted, has a liberal face but remains a hegemonic device to absorb and control difference.

This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which ...
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This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.Less

Scott Spector

Published in print: 2000-01-03

This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.

This chapter examines the revealing affinities between the works of Karl Kraus and Franz Kafka. It suggests that the affinities between Kraus and Kafka will help us to situate Kraus' anti-journalism, ...
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This chapter examines the revealing affinities between the works of Karl Kraus and Franz Kafka. It suggests that the affinities between Kraus and Kafka will help us to situate Kraus' anti-journalism, or rather to re-situate it, within the world of German-Jewish modernism. This chapter analyzes how Kraus framed his style in critical relation to certain tendencies in German-Jewish culture and considers how key formal features of Die Fackel connect with Kraus' radical authorial self-fashioning.Less

Mirror-Man

Published in print: 2008-02-01

This chapter examines the revealing affinities between the works of Karl Kraus and Franz Kafka. It suggests that the affinities between Kraus and Kafka will help us to situate Kraus' anti-journalism, or rather to re-situate it, within the world of German-Jewish modernism. This chapter analyzes how Kraus framed his style in critical relation to certain tendencies in German-Jewish culture and considers how key formal features of Die Fackel connect with Kraus' radical authorial self-fashioning.

This chapter talks about Prague German culture and the city's German-speaking Jewish population. For German culture was as central to bourgeois Jewish life in Prague as Jews seemed to be to its ...
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This chapter talks about Prague German culture and the city's German-speaking Jewish population. For German culture was as central to bourgeois Jewish life in Prague as Jews seemed to be to its production, funding, and appreciation. The generation of Franz Kafka, Felix Weltsch, Egon Erwin Kisch, and Max Brod grew into an awareness of the dilemma of culture and nation in Prague that the generations before them had been able to repress. Their early explorations of the constellation of issues attached to artistic production in postliberal Prague point to a tension between aesthetics and politics, art and life, text and context—in other words, the specific pathology of their very particular condition in this time and place put them in a privileged position vis-à-vis a set of issues at the center of the Modern.Less

Where's the Difference? : Culture, Ideology, and the Aesthetics of Nationality

Scott Spector

Published in print: 2000-01-03

This chapter talks about Prague German culture and the city's German-speaking Jewish population. For German culture was as central to bourgeois Jewish life in Prague as Jews seemed to be to its production, funding, and appreciation. The generation of Franz Kafka, Felix Weltsch, Egon Erwin Kisch, and Max Brod grew into an awareness of the dilemma of culture and nation in Prague that the generations before them had been able to repress. Their early explorations of the constellation of issues attached to artistic production in postliberal Prague point to a tension between aesthetics and politics, art and life, text and context—in other words, the specific pathology of their very particular condition in this time and place put them in a privileged position vis-à-vis a set of issues at the center of the Modern.

This chapter looks at essays written between 1981 and 1993 and examines the range of topics presented in them—the fiction of David Fogel, the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Hebrew prose in America, a ...
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This chapter looks at essays written between 1981 and 1993 and examines the range of topics presented in them—the fiction of David Fogel, the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Hebrew prose in America, a comparison of the family as theme in the narratives of Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow, and S. Y. Agnon, literary responses to the Holocaust and more. The essays are arranged roughly in chronological order, giving a sense of the scope of cultural change that has produced this literature. In addition to essays on individual writers, sketched here are the challenges faced by an ancient language reborn as a medium for modern fiction, the migration of literary centers in the formative years of modern Hebrew writing, and the development of the Israeli novel.Less

Language, Literature and the Arts

Ezra Mendelsohn

Published in print: 1997-04-10

This chapter looks at essays written between 1981 and 1993 and examines the range of topics presented in them—the fiction of David Fogel, the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Hebrew prose in America, a comparison of the family as theme in the narratives of Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow, and S. Y. Agnon, literary responses to the Holocaust and more. The essays are arranged roughly in chronological order, giving a sense of the scope of cultural change that has produced this literature. In addition to essays on individual writers, sketched here are the challenges faced by an ancient language reborn as a medium for modern fiction, the migration of literary centers in the formative years of modern Hebrew writing, and the development of the Israeli novel.